BYOD work culture: Would it rule the roost in 2013?

The latest tech trend, which is changing the work culture in Indian IT industry is Bring your own device or BYOD. One of a recent mobile device ad shows a young executive, who completes his presentation on the way and the time he reaches to his office, the presentation was ready – is the best example to describe the BYOD work culture.

It is believed, that BYOD is the demand of time as the tech world is crumbling down under immense pressure and stiff competition. Rivalry has taken a toll and every technology giant is trying to gain the top slot. BYOD significantly helps in maintaining one’s sustainability and to increase the efficiency as the requirement of the day is to be up-to-date with every kind of information all the time.

Emails, which are the fundamental part of the workflow, are there since the glory days of BlackBerrys, but now the work requirements have changed. Today, almost every other mobile device is equipped with an office application, capable to handle basic office applications including Word documents, spreadsheets, creating and displaying presentations, giving rise to BYOD culture.

A recent survey stands evident to the fact that 8 in 10 companies see the BYOD technology as an opportunity for business growth. According to an estimate, nearly 48 percent of the workforce is using non-company-issued devices to efficiently perform their tasks. Doubtless, the figure is continuously increasing.

The concept of mobile productivity has caught on so much that most of the companies are taking initiatives and participating for setting up policies for ‘Bring your own device (BYOD)’ culture. Even, app developers are now creating platform and ecosystem to enable mobility on all devices, including PCs, smartphones and tablets which can take care of a huge part an enterprises’ workflow.

Challenges to face

It’s not all sunshine and roses. There are some tradeoffs and cautions that users need to be aware of before engaging in a BYOD culture. The foremost issue is Privacy. Merging personal and business data on a single device can raise concerns that the employee may have access to business data beyond the office. Also, employer can have access to employees’ sensitive personal data.

Another major concern is money. Whenever a company issues a laptop or mobile phone to an employee, it is understood that the company bought the hardware, and it would be responsible for any monthly wireless bills. An important thing to be taken care by company as well as the employee is the limit to use that resource.

Besides these challenges, any data that is shared on a mobile device like a smartphone or a tablet increases the risk of being shared or lost or fall in wrong hands.

Well! To minimize the risk, organizations should keep few important points in mind like the software they are using for security of company data on the device, resources they are going to allow access to and the limit to use resources.